


Not Undone

by Harbinger



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: The Winter Soldier Spoilers, M/M, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Avengers never happened, Warning: Loki
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-08-18
Updated: 2014-08-20
Packaged: 2018-02-13 18:40:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2160969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harbinger/pseuds/Harbinger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Loki falls, he lands not in the hands of the Mad Titan but on Midgard and in with SHIELD, who turn him into one of their most powerful agents. Following the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, what is left of SHIELD has taken captive the Soldier and it falls to Loki to tame HYDRA’s ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Exile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exile/gifts).



> My darling friend [Gale](http://exiledtrickster.tumblr.com) requested some Winterfrost over tumblr for a trade of a story or a drawing or something. Because I have a serious weakness for Winterfrost, I decided to do a thing. Thing was supposed to be a one-shot and well it kinda got out of hand. I'm thinking it might be 4 chapters but dunno, may get longer or shorter. Second part should be up in a few days. I can be found [here](http://gonnabreakbad.tumblr.com) or [here](http://ofhousepaul.tumblr.com) for requests or conversation

Tendrils of smoke still coil loosely in the heavens, choking it with smog and malice, looming dark over the capitol city. What remains of SHIELD has gone to ground, literally; beneath the smoky streets of DC, which still tremble under the feet of titans rising and falling, a labyrinth has opened. Agents scurry to and fro, moving from room to room. The underground fortress is colossal to behold, myriad tunnels running this way and that, permitting the agents of the dying giant to continue operations for as long as they can.

Within one room, a quiet malevolence sits, reading a report. Raiment the hues of emeralds and onyx cling to his powerful frame, visage outlined in inky tendrils; his cutting oculars of malachite rise to observe the lissome figure slipping into his study. The femme fatale is slender, of crimson hair and clad in solid black, pale flesh offset by it and the vivid green of her own eyes; they sparkle brilliantly but with sorrow. He feels her sadness like a living, breathing creature and inhales.

“Loki,” Black Widow articulates softly, her lightly accented tone filled with something that may have been amusement but he thinks is a cover for _unease_. “They’re ready for you.”

Six feet two of lean power unfurls from the seating position and he artfully straightens the clothing that clutches him. Oral parcel flicking over thin lips, he smiles at her, all quiet warning and dark hostility. A gesticulation encourages her to lead the way and on silent limbs the dark creature – who oozes an aura that warns him to not be fully human – follows after.

Moments pass and they come to a room that has obviously been furnished into a cell. Within it, locked under heavy manacles, there is a man chained to the wall. Curious emeralds slide over him, drinking in the sight of a warrior; the anomaly is the metal arm that replaces what should have been a left arm, chained the most heavily. Yet clearly this human is a killing machine; the light underclothing, a black muscle shirt and black training pants, leave nothing to imagination in terms of sheer musculature. Someone, the god thinks, has gone to great trouble to make this man a machine.

“How long do I have with him?” His voice is svelte and a low croon, soothing to the ear and dripping honeyed poison.

The crimson haired woman looks over at him, pursing her maw slightly. “As long as you need,” she states softly, pressing a button to open the door and he steps inside.

\--

Loki lets the door close behind him and hears the speakers buzz off; silence befalls them and only sight is afforded those without now. The chained male lifts his head to let lackluster azure hues meet with the malachite ones and the god-agent is surprised to see nothing behind them. Most who he is set to deal with meet him with rage and anger or with fear and sniveling. This human, whose dark tendrils hang to his shoulders and are tangled, bears nothing at all to his being; a blank slate, waiting.

Thus, the god steps further in, casually avoiding the bolted table within the center of the cell. Against the chained man, he is the picture of elegance, posture erect and clad in the finest of garments, silk and wool Armani covering his powerful frame. He is polished, diamond versus coal.

“James Buchanan Barnes. Sergeant. Winter Soldier. Asset.”

The last two titles achieve the reaction he has been looking for; a twitch of the upper lip, like the dog wants to snarl. Pale maw spreading into a smile, the limber being strides to sit upon the table, the picture of malicious grace and looking coldly amused as he levels those jade oculars upon the dark brute. Heavy features mismatch against the fine ones that watch; were the god-agent not in the know, he would believe this being to be Russian.

“Who are you?” the voice is quiet, devoid of an accent, something that has no doubt been practiced, measured, but without personality. It reminds him of the Widow but she has some life to her voice.

The deity tips his head to the side, slips from the table, and prowls closer, pale curiosity glimmering in his cool oculars. “I am Loki, formerly of Asgard. Now of Midgard and of SHIELD. The precise, ah, details as to how that came about is not for you to know,” a chuckle escapes. One pallid finger traces a groove in the arm; it shifts like a living thing and the dark creature smiles. “I’m very interested in you, Soldier, as are those I work with. As is Captain Rogers.”

No doubt this human has been captured and tortured before; yet there is a weakness there that makes him twitch again, so minute most would have lost it. He knows of the Captain’s battle against this human, the terrible match they make, but Captain Rogers does not know that they have the Winter Soldier.

Loki chuckles and returns to the table, settling on top of it silently.

He leans forward, bracing one arm on a powerful thigh and letting the other trace a finger around his mouth. “Well, if I may be blunt, I’m less interested in you and more in your masters.”

“They’re not my masters.”

“Oh? My apologies, then. What would you call them, Soldier?”

For long moments, silence reigns; the deity observes without speech the considerations that play out upon that visage. A wide variety of emotions can be read there by his skilled ocular; confusion, unease, anger, hatred, back to confusion. It lingers longest and finally, that low voice emits again.

“Handlers. Just handlers. What do you want with them?”

Loki rises, stepping closer to the chained human. He reaches aloft, lying one pale hand upon the chains and they melt away, slipping like gunmetal ghosts into nothingness. The altered human drops, caught with one hand upon his chest; the god can feel the Winter Soldier shaking. Exhaustion, exertion, or fear, he knows not and cares not.

The Soldier is permitted to sink down to sit and though the deity moves back first, he, too, sits down. He is giving the human the chance to see them as equals, whatever else the god himself may or may not think. Back supported by the leg of the bolted table, Loki makes himself comfortable, lazy oculars observing with dark interest and something like mirth.

“I want to end them, of course. They killed my friends. They wounded many innocents and killed many more. They are, in short, worthless, hollow beings, a decrepit organization of a time long dead, who need to be eradicated. For the good of all.” There is something strange to the smile he gives, unseen by the cameras around them.

A frown furrows the heavy visage, brows drawing in together; behind those dulled oculars, the deity can see the cogs and gears turning and moving. The articulations, when they come, are ponderous and it is clear have been given heavy consideration. “SHIELD will need help.”

A pale tongue licks at thin lips and the ravenous god tilts his crania a touch, accepting of those words. Yet still his smile paints an enigma. “True. We will. Are you willing to help us, Soldier? Your skills are legendary, of course. We would not be so callous as to hold you captive, either.”

Loki unfurls his frame with the utmost grace, coiling long limbs beneath him and rising without hands touching cold tile. One of those spider-like appendages extends, an offering. “Take my hand, Winter Soldier. Take my hand and we will tear them down together.”

Sapphires rise, level upon the pale hand. Vengeance has not crossed his mind; he lacks the capability to consider such, as of current. But now, with it held before him, his psyche moves to curl around it, focusing wholly upon it. The idea of bringing them down pleases the Winter Soldier in a way he has not considered ever, as of yet.

Those azure hues lift higher, to meet malachite. There is a darkness to this being, a dark core within him that the Soldier has never felt before. But he is tired of cages. He is tired of being trapped. Freedom is a thing all beings want and thus, he reaches, and metal fingers close around a fleshy hand.


	2. Chapter 2

“He’s perfect.”

Through the heavy pane, reinforced to stop a bullet – or, in this case, a metallic arm, should SHIELD’s new asset suddenly turn on them – Widow and god observe the training. Each movement on the Soldier’s part in a lesson in fluidity, individual strands of anatomy coming together to make up a whole whose entire being has been geared towards the mute takedown of all who stand in the way of progress. Precisely _whose_ progress, Loki does not think the Soldier cares. James Barnes may have, at one point in his life, been a champion of all things great and good and kind, when not putting bullets in the heads of Nazis, but now, he is a machine – fine-tuned, well oiled, merciless, and deadly.

“He’s dangerous,” the Widow comments, deadpanning the obvious as the Soldier takes down one of the training dummies within. The caricature of a human is eviscerated with a single swipe of a blade held within those metal fingers. Loki smiles.

“And how fortunate for us that he is, my dear agent Romanoff. We need dangerous. We need a weapon we can use.” The god brushes one finger along his lower lip, malachite eyes locked upon the human within.

“We have a weapon, Loki. You. That is why we took you in instead of handing you back over to Asgard. Remember?” The woman’s claret maw thins and she cuts a look to him.

The god permits his visage to warp into something like wounded disappointment, oculars brimming with sorrow. “You wound me, dear Natasha. And here I thought you considered me to be in such high light. But tell me something – if I am merely a tool in your hands, as he was to them, does that not make us as bad as they are?”

Natasha Romanoff says nothing for a time, instead watches the human inside train. She will never forget this one; not even the Red Room had taken him from her, in the end. Her from him, on the other hand…. Her teeth grit, jaws working and Loki smiles.

“Perhaps we’re bad in different ways,” he comments quietly, arms coming akimbo with lissome hands caressing his own biceps; if the Soldier is a lesson in fluidity, then Loki is one in poetry, his every move seductive and graceful.

Within, the asset stabs a dummy through the temple and stands, the last one defeated, turning to look at them through the glass. His expression is blank, devoid of expression, and save for the sweat dotting his countenance and the heaving of his chest beneath the practical armor, one would not have known he had just been fighting.

“The Director is furious at you,” Natasha says finally. “You were supposed to get information, not assistance.”

“The Director can kiss my ass,” Loki mutters, voice seething a bit and the lights around them dim briefly before flaring back to normal. “Through gaining his cooperation, I have given us the chance to get information as well as assistance. We need him, Agent Romanoff.”

She chuckles and dips her skull towards him, a show of agreement. “No, I know we do. I’m just conveying what I was told.”

“I did what needed to be done and notice, I have won us a Soldier. HYDRA will be nervous indeed now and that is something we need. They will see Washington as a victory, albeit a pyrrhic one indeed. At any rate, I believe the Soldier will enjoy cutting down those who have harmed him so.” Loki gestures at one of the men who has been keeping the door closed and it opens; out prowls the asset, whose feral eyes lock upon Loki immediately. The god smiles, teeth gleaming in pale illumination.

“Very well done, Soldier. Your skills are as legendary as your story. Come, it is time to begin.”

\--

Europe is a grenade with the pin already pulled, leaders struggling to hold onto it lest it explode in their hands. Eastern Europe sits upon the edge of a knife, ready at any moment to either be quietly sheathed or placed into the heart of their enemy. Chaos breathes in every part of the continent and Loki inhales is slowly, skull cocked to the heavens.

They are in Belarus, near the southern border, not so far from Kiev that they could not get there in a few hours, if needs must and if they hurried. There is malice seething quietly in the air, a dry loathing that catches in the back of the throat, one that the Chaos agent basks in. Disguised in the semblance of a youth, spotty with acne and bespectacled, the god dances about with a languid gait, circling now and then in a graceful spin to check the whole of his surroundings. He wears slim fitting jeans and a flamboyant violet shirt, with tangled tresses of platinum blonde; unrecognizable as one of SHIELD’s best agents.

The Soldier, notably, is nowhere to be seen but the deity is aware of his presence; he would not need the small ear piece slipped in his left ear to know that. The powerful assassin shadows him without sound, without being seen, as his training has been tailored to do. Intelligence gathered with care has told them that there is a small sleeper cell resting here, though that it will soon awaken and become operational once more – if, of course, it has not already done so. They are to locate it and silence it before it has the chance to stir, without prejudice, if at all possible.

“ _Three on your six. Two at your twelve. One approaching from the three._ ”

The silken voice of the ghost croons lowly into his ear, alerting him to what the deity is aware of already; the agents, it seems, have already awoken and are on the move. Loki hums low in his throat and abruptly changes direction, luring the six agents of HYDRA away from the square, where myriad people gather and mingle. The deaths of innocent civilians will put a damper on their operation indeed.

“ _Get them where I can get clear shots_ ,” the Soldier whispers softly and perhaps the shadow that passes over Loki is a bird – or something more deadly to humanity. Following the directions, the kid-god manages to lure them down into an alley, turning around at the end and frowning at his pursuers.

“Um,” he states slowly, graceless words struggling over the supposedly foreign words. “Help you guys?”

Six guns are lifted at the same time and directed at his frame. Loki rolls his eyes a bit, allowing his disguise to slowly fade away. “How unoriginal,” he croons softly, voice seething and dripping with cold malevolence. A languid gesture by lazy digits brings forth a silver staff, seven feet tall and topped with a wicked curved blade. “You could at least make it interesting.”

“There’s no need for you to die,” one of them says, harsh lyrics sharp to the god’s ears. “We want the Winter Soldier back. We know you hold his leash now. Call him. Give him to us. Walk away unscathed.”

Loki lifts a brow slowly, a contemplative expression crossing his fine visage. He can hear the Soldier breathing in his ear, close but hidden. “Soldier, come here,” he orders without warning.

There is no hesitation; from above him, a shadow crosses and the Soldier lands in a crouch, the picture of controlled violence and the god smiles. The assassin rights himself slowly, standing in front of Loki by several feet but slightly to the side; the deity strides forth quietly to stand at his shoulder, looking at the ghost with a smile.

“If you want him,” he states slowly, subtly touching the Soldier’s back – permission. “Come take him.”

They’ve been training together for weeks now and they move as one; Loki is terrible poetry while the assassin is a sinuous flow. A force field is thrown up briefly against the first wave of gun fire, teeth of the god bared and if they look sharper than a normal human’s, then that is because they are. It falls mere seconds later though perhaps adrenaline makes it seem ever the longer. The Soldier makes no noise – it is not his way, the god has learned. He strikes, silent, pulling a knife from a sheathe and catching the first man in throat with it.

Loki brings the staff up then down, planting the butt into the ground; using the momentum from it, he leaps up to slam both feet into one man. A fragile human ribcage breaks under his mass and the man suffocates on his own blood as a rib punctures a lung. He ducks under a haymaker that likely would have done nothing to him and twists easily to slam a dagger into a kidney, catching sight of the ghost.

The Winter Soldier makes fighting an art, Loki decides as he takes half a second to watch. The metal arm allow shim to be all but unstoppable, deadly to all humans, powerful against even those like Loki, whose humanity is questionable at the best of times and whose body is certainly not human. There are parts of Barnes still in him, Loki muses, killing the only one that was still fighting him; the other three were fighting the Soldier, three to one.

The HYDRA agents were _losing_.

Visage unmasked, the Soldier’s emotions, such as they are, show plainly. A ferine snarl convolutes his countenance with malice as he puts a knife into the forehead of one. Two are left now; a gun comes up and Loki throws a field again, disallowing any bullets to reach the Soldier. He hears, over the sound of battle, the Soldier give a grunt and notices that the other one has stuck the assassin in the side with a knife of his own.

It does not seem to slow him down, however, as a metal fist meets a human face; Loki hears the crush of bones and cannot hold back a laugh, shaking his head some. It leaves one and the god has lost interest in this; he tosses a dagger and it sinks into the spinal column, leaving the man alive but wholly paralyzed. He drops like a ton of bricks and Loki swaggers over.

“Thanks for the help,” the Soldier mutters, a heavy expulsion of air escaping him to show his vexation.

“It was no problem,” the god quips in reply, smiling.

Booted foot nudging the man over, Loki crouches to one knee, peering at him curiously. “Russian or German?” he asks of his companion, smile becoming more a cruel grin.

There is no warning.

The agent’s head explodes, sending brain and bits of bone everywhere; Loki rears back and loses his balance, going down in the slick of blood around them. The sound of the Soldier giving a sudden cry – pain, anger, or fear, the god cannot tell – breaks through the agony that explodes in the back of his own head and Loki snarls, a hand arcing through the air.

He sees a blurry figure leap him, hears the thud of a body striking a body and manages to roll enough to see the ghost tangling with another man, who drops a still smoking gun to the ground as the Soldier hits him. This one wears obvious HYDRA gear, though it seems neither of them had seen this one earlier. Step for step, the two warriors are matched evenly, as evenly as Captain Rogers and the Winter Soldier had been. So beautiful is the fight that it seems choreographed but after a few seconds, the HYDRA agent clearly has the upper hand.

Loki struggles to his feet, grimacing, summoning his staff to his hand. He silently charges into the fray, but has no intention of joining the fight other than to _end_ it. A single sweep of the bladed end opens the man from navel to throat, gore spilling everywhere and splattering them body.

For a moment after, all they can do is stare at one another and pant into the quiet, broken only by the wailing of sirens approaching.

\--

“Are you actually an idiot or did you slip somewhere between the last time I saw you and that _fiasco_ and hit your head?!” The Black Widow’s voice seethes with anger as she glowers at Loki through the screen.

“Do not pull that tone with me, Widow,” the god replies in tones of utmost rage, eyes flashing.

“I’ll pull whatever tone I want with you, Loki, I am your _handler_!”

The lights in the room flicker and dim suddenly, an obvious expression of the god’s growing anger. “It was an _ambush_ , Natasha, there was nothing we could do about it! They knew we were going to be there, so obviously someone talked.”

The Widow exhales heavily but makes herself sit down, aware that getting angry with the god will do more harm than good. She can see, off behind Loki, the Winter Soldier watching them. “If someone talked, it had to have been from within, meaning HYDRA is still sleeping in our ranks.”

“I wouldn’t call it sleeping,” Loki points out quietly, shaking his head. “HYDRA wasn’t sleeping for fifty-some years while they fed war and chaos. SHIELD is floundering while the parasite continues to grow within her; if we do not cut them out soon, we will perish and you know that. You wanted me out in the field with him, so we could take down operations out here whilst you worked from within. So let me do my job, Natasha.”

Natasha looks away, jaws grit and tight. She’s alone on her end but distrustful even of her own room now, as the lies of HYDRA continue to grow and the roots spread further and deeper. They are ingrained within the organization; exactly how low and high HYDRA’s grasp on SHIELD is, even she does not know. There is still smoke in the DC sky and her shoulder still twinges from a gunshot wound given to her by the Winter Soldier. Natasha Romanoff is running thin on allies.

“Fine. I’ll send the coordinates for the next cell. Try not to get killed, okay?” She levels the god with a glower and he smirks.

“I’ll do my best.”

The connection clicks off but his phone dings a moment later, letting him know that the coordinates have indeed gone through. Lissome digits pick it up and malachite gems scan it and he grins.

“Time to go.”


End file.
